SEC has revealed evidence of a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co,

urvi470 Here's a rundown of how the different forms work in this case

Facilitated: In all the choices where it appears, "facilitated" serves as a verb describing what the brokerage house did. (Sometimes past participles (-ed forms) can serve as noun modifiers, but that doesn't happen here.)

Facilitating (no comma): In A, "facilitating" serves as one part of an adverbial modifier (parallel with "delivering"). In this case, the modifier doesn't fit properly into the sentence. Unfortunately, there's no appropriate verb for this phrase to modify. (Sometimes present participles (-ing forms) without commas can serve as noun modifiers, too, but only when they are directly attached to a noun or noun phrase.)

Facilitating (preceded by comma): Present participles (-ing forms) preceded by a comma are almost always adverbial modifiers. In D, the modifier starting with ", facilitating" is definitely an adverbial modifier, showing a result of the previous action. However, notice that it is immediately followed by another adverbial modifier. (See my the correction in my previous post. The sentence doesn't work at all unless we say ", putting small investors at risk."

Before we get too deep into this one, I should point out that the non-underlined portion needs two little additions to work: a "the" and a comma. It doesn't work without them.

insider trading and massive intra-day trading throughout the last decade, putting small retail investors at risk.

SEC revealed evidence of a brokerage house..... Wrong. Sec has revealed that the brokerage house was involved in some wrong pratice... Therefore A,C,E are out.

There is no such action and consequence relationship.. hence D out.. Ans B ?

Posted from my mobile device

Please explain why is option D incorrect?

What is wrong with C?

I found this question tough. I was not able to decode the meaning properly as in what must be the modifiers

HI,

I have a difficult time understanding the difference and usage of
Facilitated, Facilitating and comma+Facilitating

If comma+Facilitating is used, does it mean that it is showing result here?

Can anyone help?
than you

B delivering shares correctly modifies brokerage house and function of facilitate inside trading etc.. and stated clearly

D points out that it delivers shares which in result facilitate inside trading which is not interested ded meaning so D is wrong.
Brokerage house is facilitating inside trading not number of shares

Posted from my mobile device

We can remove A,C & E as reporting verb "reveal" shold be followed by that.
between B & D

B. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitated

SEC has revealed evidence that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitated insider trading and massive intra-day trading throughout last decade putting small retail investors at risk.
correct as we have a clause after that.

D. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co delivered about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitating

SEC has revealed evidence that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co delivered about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitating insider trading and massive intra-day trading throughout last decade putting small retail investors at risk.

No bonafide verb after that so wrong.

expert comment whether my understanding is correct.

Hi DmitryFarber

B. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitated
D. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co delivered about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitating

I chose B on grounds that relative clause absorbed -ing modifier, making the sentence unambiguous, whereas in choice D "facilitating" stands out of prepositional phrase, and can refer to the main SVO "SEC has revealed evidence".

My question: What -ing grammatically modifies if we see construction: [Main SVO] + [that/which relative clause] + [comma + -ing]? Or there is no any grammatical rule on it, but only logica one? Thanks!

SEC has revealed evidence of a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily and facilitating insider trading and massive intra-day trading throughout last decade putting small retail investors at risk.
Decoding Meaning-
SEC has revealed evidence about a brokerage firm that is comparable in size to Stern &Co
The modifier "delivering .." shows the quantum of transactions done by this firm
and in the last part SEC accuses the firm - "facilitating...".

A. of a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily and facilitating
the parallelism is not logical and revealed should be followed by that
B. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co, delivering about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitated
The intended meaning is clear in the sentence
C. of a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co that delivered about 1.5 million shares daily and that facilitated
"That" should follow reveal
D. that a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co delivered about 1.5 million shares daily, facilitating
here the meaning is distorted: SEC has revealed evidence that the firm committed a fraud via delivering 1.5 mn shares, but the sense of this modifier is to denote quantum of shares handled (to signify how big the firm is and why it is comparable to Stern & co)
E. of a brokerage house as big as Stern & Co delivering about 1.5 million shares daily and that it facilitated
This option breaks parallelism as there is no "that" in the first part.Further stern is not delivering 1.5 mn shares
Hope this helps

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